Fereghan carpet

In the manner of a fine Persian shawl, this splendid Fereghan carpet draws rows of elegant paisley clusters throughout its field. Color is superb and lively and includes a particularly pleasing golden ground from which shades of blue, green, and rose illuminate. The paisleys, or ‘boteh’ as they are known in Persian, are particularly well drawn, each cluster based around a large version of the element matched with a smaller protruding variant which is set above a pair of even smaller renderings of the motif. This pairing of paisley, sometimes known as ‘mother and daughter boteh’ in the literature, is seldom encountered in large central Persian worksop carpets. Indeed, when it comes to knotted pile rugs, this particular imagery seems to have been adapted most frequently by south Persian weavers, themselves less wed to formal carpet design and more willing to incorporate fine and portable textile designs into their rug weaving repertoires. Curiously, this Fereghan carpet itself incorporates small motifs, such as rustically drawn birds and small geometric rosettes that seem more reminiscent of Persian tribal weaving than most large workshop carpets. It is thus likely that the women hired to weave this piece brought with them their own domestic village sensibilities and were given the freedom by their employers to integrate them within this masterful and inspired Persian carpet.